Republican Purity Test May Be Obama’s Top Asset: Albert R. Hunt

One of the few political pleasures
for President Barack Obama’s re-election team these days is
watching the Republican primary fight.

Driven by a hardcore conservative base, and right-wing
audiences at debates, Republicans risk accentuating the public’s
perception that the party is too extreme.

On issues ranging from taxes to Medicare and Social
Security and immigration, the rhetoric often is directed at
placating conservatives. What may prove helpful in primaries and
caucuses could come back to haunt in the general election.

President Richard Nixon used to say that the key to U.S.
politics was to appeal to the base in the primaries and move to
the center in the general elections. That’s difficult if the
nomination contests swing too far.

Obama and the Democrats relish this prospect. With a lousy
economy and falling popularity, their best weapon in 2012 may be
the Republicans.

Stan Greenberg, one of the top Democratic polltakers, says
that while the Republican survivor in a tough race may be a
better candidate, there are danger signs for the party.

This is a backroom Republican concern. Some supporters of
Texas Governor Rick Perry already complain about the broadsides
against their candidate in the two months since he entered the
race. And John Feehery, a Republican political consultant,
worries that if, as many think likely, former Massachusetts
Governor Mitt Romney gets the nomination “the anti-Romney
forces within the Tea Party will start a rebellion and run a
third party.”

Appearances can be damaging. Audiences at Republican forums
have booed a gay soldier, cheered at the mention of executions
and a few appeared to embrace the notion of letting an uninsured
man die if he became ill. None of those are views expressed by
the candidates; they still convey an image.

More substantively, however, Republican hopefuls have all
rejected a hypothetical deficit-reduction plan that involved
huge spending cuts because there also would have been a small
tax increase. They also have expressed skepticism about Medicare
and Social Security, and hostility to immigration.

Perry, supposedly the leading conservative in the field,
most recently has been assailed for allowing sons and daughters
of undocumented workers to attend college in Texas at the lower
in-state tuition rates. This attack appeals to a virulent anti-
immigrant strain in the Republican Party.

Hispanic Voters

It also complicates Republican efforts in the general
election to attract the ever-increasing Hispanic vote. Moreover,
there’s a certain disconnect. Would the critics deny these
academically qualified kids the right to college, which would
enhance their value to the economy, or would it be all right if
they simply paid the higher tuition, which many can’t afford?

Perry also has been lambasted for once trying to require
that Texas schoolgirls be inoculated with a vaccine that
minimizes their vulnerability to cervical cancer. This is the
second most lethal cancer for women and the vaccine has been
strongly endorsed as effective by the Centers for Disease
Control. For most Americans, inoculation would seem a reasonable
mandate.

Romney, the party’s other frontrunner, is roundly
criticized for enacting a health-care plan when he was governor
that most analysts say has improved care in Massachusetts.
Further, those who charge that the Massachusetts plan was a
left-wing precursor to Obama’s Affordable Care Act ignore that
Romney was assisted by the conservative Heritage Foundation in
designing the measure.

Huntsman’s Positions

Further back in the Republican pack, former Utah Governor
Jon Huntsman has been derided for supporting civil unions for
gays and lesbians and recognizing that global warming is a
serious problem. Both of these are mainstream views among the
general electorate.

Primary battles can be beneficial. Obama’s standing and
skills as the Democratic nominee last time were honed by his
intense battle for the nomination against Hillary Clinton. An
exceptionally tough and protracted battle, it never became
ideologically toxic.

“Obama-Clinton was painful for them, but it absolutely did
not leave the party divided in any way,” Greenberg says.

Nomination Unity

Likewise, Ronald Reagan was a much better candidate in the
fall of 1980 after defeating George H.W. Bush and Senator Howard Baker in spirited, though relatively civil, Republican primaries.
He further created unity by selecting Bush as his running mate.

Other presidential primaries in the modern era have
irreparably caricatured a party and a nominee as so out of the
mainstream that the fall campaign became impossible. That was
the case with Barry Goldwater and the right in the 1964
Republican contest and George McGovern and the left in the 1972
Democratic battle.

Republicans insist they can avoid that pitfall and point to
their leading candidates. Perry, supporters say, is more Reagan
than Goldwater, able to arouse the faithful while tapping into a
much broader public resentment; this is a fear of a few top
Obama advisers.

Romney, who increasingly is the candidate of the old-line
Republican establishment, has avoided the fringe stances, his
supporters say, and is positioned to appeal to centrists and
independents in the general election.

Romney Focus

That’s the primary concern of the Obama political team,
which is why they have -- indelicately -- vowed to demolish the
former Massachusetts governor.

The Republican establishment, however, is worried; witness
the huge push to persuade New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to
enter the fray. If Christie decides to do so, which seems
unlikely, within days he’ll face similar challenges to those
confronting Perry: Questions about his support for a pathway for
citizenship for illegal aliens or for an assault-weapons ban and
other gun-control efforts. The conservative faithful aren’t very
forgiving these days.

If that persists, whoever wins the nomination, which seems
so much more of a prize with the incumbent faltering, could face
the Goldwater/McGovern situation.